Part of the reward of becoming an agent of compassionate, life-affirming change, whether or not you get public acknowledgment, is the knowledge you are doing measurable good. There is nothing theoretical about your gift as an agent of change. It may usually be anonymous, but the contribution is quite real.

There is one universal goal that everyone on earth strives towards: happiness. But what is the best way of achieving it? For many of us, happiness comes from helping others. Some of the most inspirational stories of those who have found contentment are...

I want to share with you a quick insight and offer estímulo to you if you've ever considered doing something a little risky before. Last night I taught my first art class. What I want you to know is that this is embarking way out of my comfort zone. It is a place I have never ventured to go before now. Uncharted waters, me at the helm...

Written by Katherine Gibson, Univ. of Western Sydney; Jenny Cameron, Univ. of Newcastle, and Stephen Healy, Univ. of Western Sydney

Understandings of happiness are shifting. More and more research is finding that we cannot spend our way to happiness. Increasing incomes do not necessarily lead to increasing happiness. Even in a country such as China, average incomes have increased fourfold since the 1990s while life satisfaction has decreased over the same period.

A powerful antidote to the fear and anxiety sometimes stirred up by a health condition is joy. And sometimes joy can feel in short supply when dealing with health challenges. If we want joy, we have to actively reach for it. We’ll explore some ways to do that.

To pose the question of whether we can love happiness in today’s world feels a bit like asking whether the Pope is Catholic. Most of us believe we not only puede love happiness, but that we should! Unfortunately, it is this very love of happiness that is leading many of us to experience more sadness.

They met at a party; it was love at first sight just like one reads about in romantic novels. They married following an exhilarating courtship, and since they shared an eagerness to raise a family, Jennifer soon announced the joyful news of her pregnancy. They called their baby Annie after Adam’s late mother.

Failure is a four-letter word. We cringe at the thought of it. The fear of it holds us back from pursuing our biggest dreams, but here’s the thing: there’s no such thing as failure. Life is not a game we are playing to win. Life just is, and what we choose to do with it is our business.

To experience happiness in our daily lives does not mean hiding our heads in the sand. It’s not about feeling absolutely wonderful all the livelong day. We’re meant to feel bad as well as good—the part of our brains that experiences fear, worry, sorrow, and anger is there to protect us from danger and spur us into action.

A British couple (David and Kathleen Long from Scunthorpe) beat unbelievable odds of 283-billion-to-one to win a second £1m prize on the EuroMillions lottery. Many of us dream about winning large life-changing amounts of money on games like Lotto. But does winning huge sums of money makes us happier and healthier?

The idea that we can achieve happiness by maximising pleasure and minimising pain is both intuitive and popular. The truth is, however, very different. Pleasure alone cannot not make us happy. Aldous Huxley recognised the possibility that endless pleasure may actually lead to dystopian societies in his 1932 novel Un mundo feliz. Although the idea of endless pleasure seems idyllic...

I once read a quote by Hugh Downs that said, “A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.” We only have to compare two people in the exact same circumstances—one happy, one not—to know just how true...

I’ve spent the last few years studying what contributes to the good life – the elements of well-being – for folks around the world. Well-being, it turns out, is about more than just being well. It also requires strong family and social relations, a sense of dignity in our lives and fairness in our opportunities, and commitments to larger purposes.

I think the edict that Americans are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” creates a problem that goes largely unexamined in our culture. There is a significant difference between pursuing happiness and simply being happy, and many people get caught up in the pursuit...

I realized how skewed was my interpretation of Brenda. I was focusing on one aspect of her that brought me pain to consider. Mark, on the other hand, had focused on an aspect of Brenda that brought him joy. Each of us was reaping the result of our interpretation...

Somewhere, a spirit guide whispered that this is as bad as it could get. It didn’t mention that I could die any time, from the drugs or a lack of them. It told me it was all up to me, now. I had to scrape up the will to live and do something with it.

Being present in my center is the only way I am able to be abundantly creative in managing a multitude of regions in my life: mother, writer, healer, entrepreneur, partner, and homemaker. If I tried to make a list of everything I did and cross it off in a linear manner, I would accomplish much less and with less creative insight. Instead...

Tasks we find difficult in some way can trigger procrastination. Luckily, there are tools we can use and systems we can put in place that help us prioritize and stay on top of those tough challenges. No matter how big or small the job, if something triggers your procrastination and makes you fall behind, it can be addressed in the following steps...

Everyone has their own unique awesomeness. You just have to find out what yours is and be authentic and everything in life will fall into place, right? I've been hearing that one for years too. And let me tell you, it can feel frustrating as all heck to wonder "What is MY awesome?".

Most people never think about how they spend their energy, and at the end of the day they haven’t managed their energy and have run out. They don’t have any left to do the extra things they want to do. One of the most important things you can do every day is make sure you guard your...

From this day forward you will endeavor to live just one day at a time. Yes, it’s as simple as that. No marathon to run, no lengthy report to write, no heavy-duty physical exercise (unless you want to, of course!). All that is required of you is to live today fully, as if it were your first day and your last.

Tenacity, also labeled perseverance, persistence, and stamina, is a useful component of the power of strength. Tenacity provides us staying power. Drawing forth tenacity during unsteady circumstances means not giving up prematurely and remaining committed in our stand-ability, persistently acting with confidence.

Granny was satisfied with life. Despite adversity, she did not dwell on or run from the disappointments of life; she courageously faced hardship by grieving, accepting, forgiving, and moving on. She made mistakes. But instead of living with regret, she made the effort to make a better choice the next time she faced a similar situation.

First you have to believe! Unfortunately many of us believe in the “wrong outcome”, as evidenced by the bumper sticker, “shit happens”. We believe in the inevitability of problems and struggle, but not in the inevitability of success and happy outcomes.

Study carefully the following list of six false beliefs and the false responsibilities that are never far away from them. Dare to learn everything you can about your own false beliefs and then watch how the weight of false responsibilities falls off of you.

Your truth cannot have an effect if it goes unspoken, or if not acted upon. Where would we be if people did not question systems? Where would we be if people such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Einstein, John Lennon, and Jesus did not speak and live their truth?

When we engage the lower mind, we gain only information that leads us to make the same limiting choices as in the past, which leads us to the same limited outcomes. This decision to access the field through the higher mind or the lower mind is a choice point...

We always have many choices before us. If we believe we must grovel, plead, or struggle to manifest our dreams, these choices can seem overwhelming, even frightening. But if we realize that every choice before us represents the universe inviting us to remember who we really are, and...

This shared planetary purpose goes beyond any existing proj­ect or organization. It is our challenge to discover how to facilitate social synergy, the coming together of separate people and projects to make a new whole greater than the sum of its parts. This is nature’s way. We can learn it, because we son nature evolving.

The beginning of a new year offers a poignant opportunity to set the priorities that will carry us through the year. We succeed or fail based on what we hold dear. Choose meaningless priorities, and you become the heir to pain. Live from what you value, and your life becomes a celebration of purpose.

Many of us face challenging times in finances, career, relationships, or health at some point in our lives. We may feel powerless against the economic, social, and family forces around us and live our lives feeling bogged down or hampered by our circumstances, not knowing how to change our lives for the better.

A great way to raise your energy, increase your power, and improve your life is to practice what I call ”right seeing”. By ”right seeing”, I mean focusing your attention on the Good that is already present in all people and situations.

A coaching client reported that years ago when she became pregnant, her doctors told her that the baby would not survive. She and her husband prayed fervently for the child’s well-being, and the baby was born healthy and went on to live a happy life. Since that time she had a few miscarriages, and now the couple very much wants another child. “Do you think we each get a certain allotment of miracles, and when we use it up, we get no more?” she asked.

Conscious evolution encourages all groups to come together and compose a great and magnificent matrix in which to flourish: creating new communications, arts, sciences, education, busi­ness, environmental organizations, and health systems — the new social body.

This is one of the first strategies I adopted before I started meditating and understood what mindfulness was. I wanted to find a way of controlling my fear-based thoughts and behaviours to minimize my emotional reactions. I established the following mantras, which I used whenever I felt the slightest hint of irritation or upset...

We’ve all read countless stories that stress is bad for our health and leads to weight gain, heart disease, and a host of other emotional and physical issues. We’re told to reduce our stress, which sounds like a solid idea, but how does one accomplish that in this crazy-busy world?

In the 2000 movie, La fuerza del amor, seventeen year old Novalee Nation (played by Natalie Portman), while crossing the country in search of a new life, is abandoned by her loser boyfriend at a small town Walmart store. Last week, Joyce and I witnessed an eerily similar story...

I tried not to write this. Really, I did. But some things just won't leave you alone and I think it's a crucial step in the Love Revolution... So here it is. I'm just gonna tell it like I see it. There's some serious sh*t going down on planet Earth right now. You feel it. I feel it. We all feel it...

The time has come to make a decision. Humanity as a collec­tive is nearing the end of its ability to go on the way it has been. That isn’t meant to be a doomsday warning, just a word to the wise. We have to change course here, and the fastest way we can do it is to change our ideas about God.

When I first started using intentions, I did so because they felt good. They were positive, uplifting, and shifted my perspective to one that was more open. It wasn’t until I started exploring neurolinguistic programing as part of my life-coaching education that I realized what I was doing was conditioning these beliefs to who I was.

I know what it’s like to live my life on that runaway train. One day I’m nervous about a deadline. Then I meet the deadline, everyone’s happy with my work, and I’m immediately anxious about money . . . or a conversation I need to have . . . or a hundred other things that are waiting in the wings to keep me in a constant state of anxiety.

Grand theft identity began soon after you arrived on earth. Parents, teachers, siblings, clergy, and authority figures told you that you are inept, insignificant, ugly, unworthy, and sinful, and that the world is a menacing place with threats and danger at every turn. Over time you began to believe these terrible lies...

Every word in every language is nothing more than an agreement. If I say, “I adore my cat,” you understand what I have said only because we agree on the meaning of the sounds. What we may not agree on is the emotional charge of certain words.

No matter what we believe in, I think we can agree that stuff is up in our world and it's unsettling. It's disturbing actually and it can make us feel scared. So how DO I keep my Love Vibration strong? For me, it's all about the little things...

When Congress passed the Older Americans Act in 1965 to support elderly people who were struggling—often alone—to continue to live at home, a major plank of the legislation provided for home delivery of meals.

I would like to suggest that the holidays don’t really matter and there is nothing you really need to do about them. Such a suggestion, of course, reads like heresy. The holidays, while fun and significant, drive lots of people crazy. There are pressures to...

Research shows that satisfaction with life follows a U-shape—gradually falling from early adulthood and reaching a low point around the ages of 40 to 42. But it then reverses direction and keeps rising to the age of 70.

Our ego mind prefers safety, routine, and the status quo. It does not want us to step too far out of the front door into anything too new or different. On the other hand, our essential self wants us to stretch, grow, shed what is unnecessary or heavy, and explore this life more fully.

You must be vigilant about maintaining your vibration at a high enough level to enable you to navigate through life more purposefully, authentically, and, most importantly, safely. You will attract whatever you imagine, so to be mindful of the frequencies you are focusing on.

The reasons for our choices prevail at a level below our conscious mind. Every living thing does what it believes will bring it the greatest reward. The rub, in human terms, is that quite often the reward we percibir is not in our best interest.

Once I resolve to see the world and others as extensions of myself, each relationship in any circumstance becomes a portal to deeper Self-understanding, acceptance, and love. The end game here is that once we “get it” on the level of Unity Consciousness, the next phase of planetary evolution will begin in earnest.

Just noticing the pattern, the way in which we are similar and are connected, can bring healing, strengthen the function of your brain, and help you to be more adaptable and intelligent. What do you see when you look at the people around you?

One after another sat next to me and just slipped into my arms. Nothing needed to be said. We just looked into each other’s eyes and shared the common sadness. I needed only to love; they needed only to be loved.

How do you encourage other people when they are changing their behavior? Chances are you want to be supportive, so you focus on saying positive things to people. And that can be great. But there are several potential problems that lurk when you give feedback to others.

I know I’m not the only person who’s lived through tough times. I know that you, like me, have experienced your fair share of dreams, hopes, and disappointments. But I also know that you are committed to creating your best life. And I can help. I’ll share with you how I pushed the reset button on my life and take you through the steps so that you can too.

Change is such a big ambiguous word. There are thousands of titles of books that offer you the opportunity to change. Change your mind. Change your body. Change your relationship. Change your soul. But is change what we really seek?

When a growing percentage of the population lives past one hundred, we will see what happens to the psychological and spiritual direction of our culture. As we move into the future, we will be redefining aging. After we battle the cultural attitudes that try to define us and attempt to stall us out, we will be staying involved in life in any way we can...

A simple way of defining a pattern is a predictable response to a specific type of situation. The most obvious patterns are those that pop out when we are tired, feel attacked, in the middle of a conflict, a little ill, or overwhelmed. This is because we have less energy and attention to keep them locked down.

Many of us make New Year’s resolutions which, according to many surveys, don’t last very long. Many are gone by the end of January, and most are gone by July. Most resolutions have to do with losing weight, saving money, and taking self-improvement courses. All worthy goals, to be sure. But why do most resolutions tank?

You are more powerful than you know. But fear keeps you from your boldest possibilities. Yet what if you could cultivate a presence within that could help you choose your good all the time? Here’s an excerpt from A Year Without Fear, which can help you make these daily choices.

For most of my childhood, one of my favorite sayings was “It’s not fair!” As an adult, I continued to believe life should go the way I wanted it to go. When I couldn’t control the external world, I tried to make things better by transferring the sense of “Life isn’t right when . . .” to “I’m not right unless . . .”

As long as we choose to see certain events as the measuring stick for our lives, we have no real chance of changing. As long as we view it this way, we will be trapped by our perceptions of the past, and our lives will endlessly repeat the same types of things over and over again until...

Soul tension is basically telling us that there is a disconnection from self — we no longer know ourselves and, instead, cling to masks, labels, and roles. Soul tension is a symptom of resisting the soul, which asks nothing less of us than we dive into the journey where we will discover our as yet unknown inner potential and light.

In my book “¿Eres feliz ahora? 10 Maneras de vivir una vida feliz” I describe the 10 ways I discovered one day when I was lying on my sofa thinking about my long, dramatic life and I asked myself what I needed to remember to live the rest of my life a little bit more happily.

Soul nourishment brings true value of life. You can wander from your soul’s path, but you cannot lose it. Even the apparent detours are a part of the journey to your true destination. What seems to be an oversleeping that misses one appointment is really an awakening to keep your true appointment.

The Universe is merely an echo of our desires, regardless of whether they are constructive or destructive ones. Some people sometimes want things that in the end won’t truly help them. “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

There is no one meaning of life but rather a multitude of subjective life meanings, and there is no one purpose to life but rather a multitude of subjective life purposes. Each person must sort out her life purposes and life meanings, and proceed to make value-based meaning...

As a retiree or person nearing retire­ment, you now have the opportunity to go where your heart leads you. You can also get lost or run in circles. To know where you’re going and how to get there, you need a map. Even if you look forward to retire­ment, you’re giving up an identity and need to create a new one.

When you find the courage to do something about your low quality of life and choose to make things better you are on the right track to raising your vibration. Raising your vibration comes down to many factors and listed below are ten key steps that will definitely help towards raising your vibration immediately.

For me, an unrecognized, unexpressed feeling is like a persistent hand tapping on my shoulder. If I don’t give the feeling what it wants, acknowledgement and expression, the tapping gets more insistent. The feeling pulls more and more of my attention away from the present moment.

We hold in our mind all kinds of old fears and feelings that we’ve had since childhood, some of which we are only dimly aware. The problem is that the reptilian and mammalian parts of our brains respond strongly to those old feelings, as if they were current realities. We need to work on acknowledging those outdated feelings and fears and avoid being triggered...

When we think of the word herida, we usually do not asso­ciate it with sources of wisdom or personal power, but your wounds can reveal great knowledge and self-understanding. When you have experienced suffering that splits you open, you have the opportunity to understand the true meaning of the heart of compassion for yourself and for others in your life.

Life’s challenges are universal and eventually will find us. Whether you're moving to a new city, leaving for college, or experiencing a divorce in your family, having life throw a major curve ball our way can leave us longing for the way things used to be.

Each of us is body, mind, and spirit, and of the three, it is our minds that can limit us. While the spirit is indeed most important, it’s our cuerpos that communicate messages from Source, because our bodies are solid, substantial forms that only relay truth. The more we listen to them, the better we accurately understand what’s happening in our lives.

Values are simply your ideals and your beliefs about what matters to you and what will make your life the best it can be. Even if you choose to do something that feels unpleasant, if you examine the situation closely, you will see that your choice likely stems from your desire to live in accordance with your values.

Every religious discipline teaches it. Every culture values it. Self-control or self-mastery is a key to power. "Though one should conquer a million men on the battlefield, yet he, indeed, is the noblest victor who has conquered himself."

I always had a feeling inside that there was something more to life. In a sense I had a great life—two wonderful kids, a husband, a successful business, a house—but even with all the trappings of what one might call “success” I found that life felt empty and meaningless. Often I would ask God, “What am I doing here? What is the point of all of this?”

One of the most radical things a person can do is to see life as a good time. To make a decision to be happy. But make no mistake. Living life with alegría de vivir is a revolutionary act. It takes vigilance. Few of us believe we get to choose. We think it's a matter of fate, a roll of the dice.

For most people, emotional healing is an on-going process and occurs gradually over time. We go through a process of recognising and removing layers of programming and false beliefs that have built up over the years. Over the years I have observed two main types of healing that takes place: specific healing y deeper healing.

Suicide can be a plea for help, a response to mental illness, or the last gasp of despair. Suicide can also be an impulsive mistake, a planned ending of life, or the ultimate act of rage. Whatever the cause, suicide turns worlds upside-down. This seven-step method can assist you in finding your way out of the rabbit hole of devastation...